Every baseball fan knows the feeling of yelling at their TV after an umpire makes a terrible call behind the plate. For generations, players would see the pitch coming in, see it wasn’t the right call and either walk back to the dugout and shake their head or blow up and argue with the umpire.
Of course, you would get the manager of that team storming out and getting ejected, being held back by the bench coach while saying every swear word in the English language at that ump.
Well, that era of baseball is no more, as on March 25, the automated Ball-Strike Challenge System (ABS) debuted on Opening Night of the 2026 Major League Baseball season.
For the first time in MLB history, hitters, catchers and pitchers can challenge a ball or a strike and either get it right on the spot or realize that the umpires can be good sometimes.
The ABS System uses 12 Hawk Eye cameras set up around each ballpark to track a pitch. The batter, pitcher or catcher taps his head within two seconds of the call and the entire stadium watches the video board to see if the ball was in the strike zone or not.
Each team gets two challenges. If the team gets it right, they keep their challenges, but getting it wrong makes them lose that challenge, going down to only one until they have no more.
The early results have been wild. Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez went 4-4 on challenges behind the plate March 30. Los Angeles Angels outfielder Mike Trout led all players with four challenges through the first three days. He won three of them.
However, one person who has become the center of attention for why this system is now in place is umpire C.B. Bucknor.
In a game between the Cincinnati Reds and Boston Red Sox date, Bucknor would call back-back pitches strikes on a 1-2 count against Reds third baseman Eugenio Suárez, which were both successfully challenged by Suárez.
Bucknor would have eight calls challenged, with six of them being overturned, three pitches he missed by more than two inches.
Overall, Bucknor has been rated the least accurate umpire in MLB over the past five seasons, having a grade of 253.74 calls below the expected accuracy. He has been an umpire since 1996 and the fact that he still has a job and has been ranked the worst umpire in the league multiple times proves that ABS was designed not just for better accuracy, but also so shitty umpires like Bucknor can be held accountable.
I can go on and on about even more examples of Bucknor’s calls this year, but there is a silver lining: umpires are becoming better at their jobs.
Through early April, MLB umpires have a 93.5% accuracy rate on pitches, up from 92.7% from the same stretch last year. Considering that 2025 was already a record high, the improvement is even more noticeable, with nearly half of all challenged pitches being correct.
This means that the miscalls are often borderline pitches, rather than crazy errors.
The accountability element will now force umpires to change their ways behind the plate, as they now focus on avoiding overturned calls.
For all the drama, however, there are still concerns. Pitch framing has been a skill that catchers have spent years perfecting, but now it becomes less meaningful if borderline pitches that fool the umpire are then overturned.
Then we have cases where Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher/designated hitter Shohei Ohtani adjusts his cap after delivering the first pitch of the game, and catcher Will Smith thinks it’s a challenge signal and taps his own helmet.
It’s the kind of moment where you wonder if MLB might rethink the head-tap signal, since players touch their helmets and caps so many times a game.
Full ABS testing in the minor league showed that walks increased game time, which goes against the improvements made by the pitch clock.
On top of that, during spring training, challenges averaged 13.8 seconds each and occurred 4.1 times per game. If you’re doing the math, it comes out to 57 seconds per contested call, and when you have umpires like Bucknor missing eight calls a game, the added time becomes more noticeable.
So, where this system goes from here is the biggest question. The main goal is to give players a way to correct missed calls in high-leverage situations that fans can enjoy, and it has so far done so.
However, will MLB eventually feel pressure to expand the amount of challenges, reduce umpires’ involvement by replacing them with robotic umps or go full automation on all pitches?
For now, the answer is no, and we will continue to see how the ABS system tries to preserve what makes baseball feel like baseball by adding a layer of accountability that has been missing for decades.
